UNIVERSALISM AND MILITARY
ETHICS*
Prepared for the Joint
Services’ Conference on ProfessionalEthics XXII
Springfield, Virginia
28 January 2000
(*This
paper neither carries nor implies the endorsement of the Department of Defense, of the U.S. Air Force, of Air University, or of the Air War College.)
by
James
H. Toner
Professor
of International Relations & Military Ethics
Department
of Leadership and Ethics
Air
War College
(James.Toner@maxwell.af.mil)
and
Christopher
H. Toner
Doctoral
Student
Department
of Philosophy
University
of Notre Dame
(Christopher.H.Toner.7@nd.edu)
------------------------------------------------------
Love, and do as you will.
Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.
--St. Augustine (354-430)
In the First Book of Esdras in the Deuterocanon of the
Catholic Bible, guards of the Emperor Darius engage in a debate as to what is
the strongest thing in the world. After
hearing arguments for wine, for women, and for the emperor, the only named
guard, Zerubbabel, puts forward Truth as the strongest thing in the world:
There
is not the slightest injustice in truth.
You will find injustice in wine, the emperor, women, all human beings in
all they do, and in everything else.
There is no truth in them; they are unjust and they will perish. But truth endures and is always strong; it
will continue to live and reign forever.
Truth shows no partiality or favoritism; it does what is right, rather
than what is unjust or evil. Everyone
approves what truth does; its decisions are always fair. Truth is strong, royal, powerful, and
majestic forever. Let all things praise the God of truth!
The emperor proclaims
Zerubbabel the winner.
Justice and truth are apparently inseparable. To be just, one must both know and be
disposed to bring about the realization of the “practical truth,” that is, the
truth about what should be done here and now.
But often this truth is difficult to discern. Consider this scenario, taken from the novel Fail-Safe: the United
States, by mistake, has launched a nuclear bomber attack on the Soviet
Union. The American President appeals
to the Soviet leader to absorb without retaliation the nuclear strike on
Moscow. The Soviet leader informs the
President that such a course is politically and militarily impossible; he must
and will retaliate. World War III has
begun--by mistake. The President issues
a macabre command to a U.S. Air Force Officer.
The officer is to fly an American bomber over New York City and drop one
nuclear weapon on the city, killing millions of his countrymen. In the process, however, World War III will
be averted because this will be evidence to the Soviet leader that the strike
on Moscow was, in fact, a mistake. The American officer follows the order and
drops the bomb, killing millions. New
York City and Moscow are gone in nuclear bursts; but World War III is
averted. Did the President act
prudently? justly? truthfully? Did the
Air Force officer carry out his true duty?
In less extreme circumstances, is it permissible to lie? to steal?
to kill in a manner that would normally be murder? Zerubbabel may be correct that Truth is the
most powerful thing in the world, but this does not help us if we cannot make
out what the practical truth of the matter is, if we cannot discern, that is,
what justice demands.
A traditional answer has it that we have been told what
justice demands--that it was clearly engraved for us on the two tables of the
Ten Commandments. Such rules as these (do
not kill, do not steal) are surely such that to ignore them is morally to
fail. The problem is that rules and
duties can sometimes conflict or at least seem to conflict. It can seem as though justice demands two
incompatible things.
But Christianity, here in concert with the great
philosophical traditions of the west, has never seen ethics as simply a matter
of rule-following. Commenting on
Christ’s affirmation of the Commandments in Matthew,
Pope John Paul II tells us that the Commandments are not only “rules to be
followed, but about the full meaning of
life.”[1] Christian moral tradition sees rules as the
foundation of a good life, a foundation which must be built upon by development
and exercise of the virtues, including the cardinal virtues of prudence,
justice, fortitude, and temperance.[2] It is the possession and exercise of these
virtues which allow us to live according to the spirit as well as the letter of
the law, and which allow us to live full and meaningful lives, lives rooted in
being, knowing, and doing what we should, in accordance with the practical
truth. In cases of conflicting duties
or competing rules, it is the virtues in general and prudence in particular
that guide us through the maze and lead us to the action to be done here and
now.
Now, what we have said so far about being just amounts
roughly to the following advice: “Be
prudent, and all will be well.” We hope
to be a bit more helpful than that.
After a brief survey of kinds of ethical theory, we will present and
argue for what we take to be the true one (which might be called universalism
or moderate absolutism), and put forward a model for developing a reflective
awareness of the state of one’s character, and possibly for finding areas in
need of adjustment or development.
Ethical Theories
In ethics, the school of thought known as Intuitionism holds that, in every
situation of moral consequence, we must consult our conscience in order to
discover the ethically right thing to do.
There are certain obligations which are reasonably self evident to
people of "ordinary sense and understanding"; these can be called prima facie duties. Keeping promises, for example, is a matter
of fundamental fairness. But prima facie
duties impose actual requirements only if there is no stronger obligation
involved. When duties conflict--and the conflict of duties is a central concern
of military ethics--we must do what best satisfies all our obligations, or
failing that, the most important of them first. This, in turn, is a function of judgment or intuition. But however important such intuitions may
be, military ethics cannot be based solely upon flashes of ethical
insight. Experience plainly teaches
that different persons have different intuitions about right and wrong.
Over the course of years, the ethical insights that we
human beings have tend to become "rules," "norms," or
"principles." These are the
"tried-and-true" concepts which we know in such forms as
"Honesty is the best policy"; "Don't lie, cheat, or steal";
or "Let your word be your bond."
These nostrums amount to the moral currency with which we deal every
day, and it would be foolish to ignore the accumulated experience of our
forebears in deliberating about how to act.
Indeed, this experience, and our upbringing in the light of it, helps to
shape our intuitions. There is a
symbiosis, then, between the "flashes of insight" known to
intuitionists and rules of conduct favored by deontologists (who customarily
resort to such rules as tests of the rightness or goodness of actions). The rules provide us general guidance, but
when they are silent or seemingly in conflict, we depend upon our ethical
insight to guide us (and it is one of the chief functions of the virtue of
prudence to inform our insight, and to ensure that our intuitions are correct).
Now, in moral science, as in physical science, there are
some basic truths. If the law of
gravity is basic in physical science, so is the law of truth-telling basic in
moral science.[3] But just as gravity can be overcome, so can
truth-telling (a law’s being overcome does not mean that it is
"canceled" or that it is not really a law). Are there, then, times we should lie, or steal? Are there times to commit murder? The argument below is so critical to the
field of military ethics that we will take it step by step.
1. Over the course of centuries, the thinking and living
of the human race has produced for us a treasury of moral knowledge, ethical
principles, and guides to rightful conduct that we ignore at our peril. The moral intuitions (and some would add
religious Revelation) of our forebears have created this deposit of moral
knowledge, this corpus of rules.
2. From this body of rules has developed a school of
ethics known as deontology, which in essence holds that we have a duty to
perform certain tasks measured by these rules or principles, regardless of
consequences.[4]
3. The school of ethics known as teleology holds that one
must determine what to do on the basis of the probable consequences of one's
choice. Utilitarians constitute one
species of teleologist,[5]
and argue that that action is right or good which brings about the greatest
happiness (by which they mean pleasure or preference satisfaction) of the
greatest number; and this can be called the principle of utility. The appeal of this school comes from the
common intuition that, in some circumstances, where the consequences of
following a particular moral rule would be drastic, an exception must be
warranted. After teaching at a war
college for ten years, one of us will testify that most military officers
determine right from wrong on the basis of a utilitarian, cost-benefit
analysis. We regard this approach as perhaps occasionally necessary as a kind
of moral shorthand, but never of itself sufficient.
That utilitarianism alone is insufficient for military
ethics is obvious: our forces, in
deciding whether or not to conduct an ambush, do not worry about whether, since
the enemy is more numerous, our winning might not bring about less overall
happiness than our losing. At the very
least, we must conjoin a principle of utility with the basic political science
question of “Cui bono?” (whose
good?--that is, who stands to gain, and who stands to lose?). Answers to this question, which in effect
limit the scope of the principle of utility, range from “my good” or “my unit’s
good” to “my country’s good” or to even greater levels of generality. In the military, the question is generally
answered for us by our mission, by our operations order, by our standard
operating procedures.
4. Yet if all
ethical matters can be reduced to utility calculations as circumscribed by our
answer to the question of cui bono,
then ethics is a function of arithmetic.
For since our answer will
always be our good, at whatever level
of generality or inclusiveness, justice will amount to little more than the
interest of the stronger. But surely
ethics is more than figuring out who wins and loses in particular
circumstances. Are there any rules
which always apply, regardless of
circumstances?
5. Our answer is
that, yes, there are some rules that always apply, among them these: One must always try to do good and to avoid
evil, and one must always seek to reason well about what is to be done (that
is, one must always seek to be prudent, to find the Truth of which Zerubbabel
spoke). One must always seek to be
just, to be brave, and to be temperate.
There are and can be no exceptions to those precepts, no matter
how much utility is at stake. To
virtually every other rule that one can stipulate, however, there are
exceptions, exemptions, or overrides.[6]
Absolutism insists that there are transcendent principles
which answer every possible situation in life regardless of culture or
consequence. Ethical or Cultural
Relativism, by contrast, insists that truth and moral conduct depend upon one's
society, station in life, or situation--and that "principles" are
relative to time and place. Here we
propose a new term--universalism[7]--to
describe the view of one who leans to absolutism (as all religious believers
must) and who accepts some absolutes
(as those in the previous paragraph), but who nevertheless understands that
certain events may compel departure from principles which would otherwise be
binding. Consider this stock example:
Suppose you are Polish and a Warsaw resident in 1939, and you are harboring two
Jews in your basement. An SS officer
knocks on the door, asking you whether you have seen any Jews. May you lie to protect the Jews?
ŸThe relativist--or utilitarian--would lie. Circumstances and probable outcomes dictate
his course of action.
ŸThe absolutist--knowing that lying is wrong--will
tell the truth if he speaks, because lying is always wrong. Circumstances and probable outcomes are
irrelevant.
ŸThe universalist may lie, reasoning that, in this
troubling circumstance in which prima
facie duties conflict, he must resolve the conflict in the most
discriminating manner possible.
The relativist chooses as his circumstances may require;
the absolutist chooses as a universal rule may require; the universalist
chooses according to circumstance, intuition and insight, rules, and reasoned
judgment. Notice that the just decision
flows from practical wisdom or prudence.
That is why, among the cardinal virtues, prudence is first, and justice
is second. Circumstances and outcomes
matter; there are flashes of insight and "gut reactions" which should
not be discounted; we do know some things, and we have developed some
rules. But all these must be filtered
through our education, our experience, our reason, our faith. For universalists, ethical decisions can be
wrenching and painful; but they are not released from taking action. "Paralysis by analysis" is not an
option. When action is required and
decisions are needed, universalists deliberate about what to do based upon the
underlying principle of military ethics:
Always choose the greatest good for the greatest number--up to a
point.
But this is not an appeal to or on behalf of utilitarianism.[8] Military officers--indeed, most of us--can
sometimes wisely use the idea of choosing between or among alternatives on the
basis of "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few or of the
one." But there are some things so
solemn and so sacred that such efforts at arithmetic ethics or mathematical
morality are, of themselves, inadequate.
There are times that we can and must say that, regardless of the
consequences, we cannot do this or that action. In other words, as we will see in detail below, there are points
beyond which we will not go and certain lines which we will not cross. It is the virtue of prudence that allows us
to discern these sacred points.
6. As we will suggest in the concluding section of this
paper, universalism (which focuses upon the prudential habit of choosing well
in situations where obligations conflict) allows us to speak, not only of good
outcomes and judicious rules, but of good people. People do not exist for rules; rules exist
for people.[9]
In the profession of arms, soldiers frequently, and
sometimes dramatically, encounter conflicting obligations. What obligation, after all, can carry
greater significance than the command "Thou shalt not kill"? Yet the soldier, when not killing the enemy,
is preparing to do precisely that. How,
therefore, can soldiers be just or participate in justice? Soldiers must constantly weigh and balance
competing claims upon their consciences.
We call these competing claims "dueling duties."
But the very notion of competing or dueling duties
suggests that there are no absolutes having unrivaled ownership of the
soldier's conscience. A number of
people, reacting to this statement that there are few absolute obligations upon
the soldier, will dismiss universalism as mere "relativism." Such assessments are mistaken. A number of years ago, Professor Malham M.
Wakin suggested that "the more human actions we attempt to incorporate
under a single principle, the less specific the principle can be; absolute
moral principles are necessarily vague."
He then makes a critical point:
"[W]e should note that if principles really are absolute . . . ,
they could never be in conflict with each other since each must be obeyed in all
possible circumstances." Wakin
continues:
Clearly, those moral obligations
dealing with human act-types, like truth-telling, promise-keeping, preservation
of life, respect for the property of others, and so on, are not absolute
obligations. Does that mean that they
are relative obligations to be observed only when we find it expedient to do
so? Certainly not.[10] Rather it is the case that we could best
refer to these types of moral obligations by use of another term; . . . let us
call them "universal" obligations. . . . Ought they always to be observed? No. Then they cannot be absolutes. Can they conflict?
Yes. Then they cannot be absolutes. Are they sufficiently arbitrary to be
ignored whenever one is in a different society or whenever it is convenient or
expedient to do so? No. Then they cannot be relative principles in
either the cultural or most subjective sense.
Universal obligations of this sort hold for all human beings (they are
not subjectively or culturally relative) but not in all possible circumstances
(they are not absolute). They hold in
analogous sets of circumstances and they may conflict with each other.[11]
Let us return to Warsaw and
the citizen deciding if he should tell the Nazis the truth about the Jews he is
harboring in his basement. If telling
the truth is an absolute ("free from any restriction, limitation,
or exception"), one's duty is to give away the Jews.[12] Now listen to the counsel of a religious
text: "The right to the
communication of the truth is not
unconditional." And:
"No one is bound to reveal the truth to someone who does not have
the right to know it."[13]
Now imagine--in a scene from Victor Hugo (1802-1885)--a
miserable, starving man desperate for food for his family and for himself. As a
parent, he must try to feed his family, but there is no work and no one will
give him so much as a crumb. He steals
a loaf of bread. Should he be severely
punished? Again the religious text
tells us that "There is no theft if . . . refusal is contrary to reason
and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent
necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food,
shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal the property of
others."[14]
Universalism counsels us that when action is necessary,
one must act to serve the greater good insofar as he is able to discern
it. The greater good in Warsaw is to
lie. The greater good for Hugo's
character is to steal. But to say
"Always do the greater good," while we think necessary advice, is not
sufficient and is morally dangerous on that account.
First, we are not sure there are ways to measure well
when we "weigh" alternatives.
Second, even if we can choose the greater good, there must be some
things we would be unwilling to do even after making our utilitarian assessment. One of us spoke recently about military
ethics to the Class of 1999 at the Naval War College and used the following
example to make a point.[15] On vacation in a Latin American country, you
are hiking in the mountains when you stumble across a band of revolutionaries
who seize you. You are glad to learn
that they "like Americans" and are prepared to let you go unharmed
after you perform a duty for them. The
revolutionaries have captured a dozen government soldiers, all of whom they
plan to execute. But if you will shoot one of those soldiers in the head with a
weapon having one bullet, they will promptly release the other eleven. The soldiers themselves are willing to
accept this, fearing that all twelve of them will be shot if you do not comply,
and believing that the revolutionaries will in fact keep their word, letting
you and them (at least eleven of them) go free after you have shot one of their
number. They are also willing, via a
gambling procedure, to choose the one soldier to die. "Always do the greater good!" Therefore, you shoot one
soldier. Right?
Wrong. You may
not shoot the soldier. One naval
officer became quite adamant, insisting that she would, in fact, kill one
hostage to save eleven others.
"They will all die unless you have the courage to kill one of
them," insisting that "This is not murder; it's killing. It’s what we in the military have to be
ready to do all the time.”
We do not agree.
Consider first this example, from the television show M*A*S*H. A group of American soldiers and South
Korean civilians in the Korean War are on a bus, which somehow has come behind
enemy lines. North Korean soldiers are
known to be in the area. The bus is camouflaged, waiting for enemy patrols to pass
by. Then they can re-start the bus and
find their way back to friendly forces.
But a South Korean woman has a crying baby, whose noise will give away
their position. "Shut the baby up!
Shut the baby up!" An American
doctor on the bus, understandably anxious not to be captured, is desperately
hoping the baby will be silenced. Then
the baby stops its crying. The enemy
patrols pass. The bus returns to
friendly lines. The South Korean woman
has suffocated her baby, and the Doctor, horrified at the incident and at his
own reactions on the bus, has a nervous breakdown. If the South Korean woman deliberately killed her child, was that
not the right course of action? No.
Surely over the centuries we have learned that
deliberately to take the life of an innocent person (that is, to commit murder)
is simply wrong: the baby is clearly
innocent and the soldier in the mountains is innocent, too, in the context
explained. We must act for the greater
good--but only up to a certain point.
Here we are again confronted with "dueling duties": kill the baby (or the soldier) to save the
bus passengers (or the other soldiers) versus not killing the baby or soldier
but thereby risking capture of the passengers or the execution of the other
soldiers. One must not commit an act of
murder. We think that the precept
prohibiting murder is another absolute; it is the only negative absolute that
we will insist upon here.
The religious concept is found at Romans 3:8 (where one
reads that one may not do evil that good may come of it--the people who do such
are "justly condemned"). Says
a religious text:
It is
. . . an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the
intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social
pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves,
independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by
reason of their object [--] such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result
from it.[16]
What is different here from the earlier cases, where we
suggested that lying or stealing for the greater good might be acceptable? The chief difference is that human life,
unlike modes of verbal communication and property rights, is not a human convention. That is, it is not something that we
invented to serve a certain purpose, and therefore it is not something that we
can rightly judge to be valueless or dispensable in certain circumstances.
Look at the matter in one other way. The intuition at work behind the naval
officer’s response is surely this: we
must trade one life for twelve (surely a bargain). The problem is this: it
is not your life to trade. You might as
well suggest that I sell you a book borrowed from a library for $100. It doesn’t matter how good a deal it is;
it’s not my book! You are not the lord
of that soldier’s life (and neither is he, at least on most religious views).[17]
Military ethics is all about dueling duties. It is all about competing claims. And it will never be easy to make clear
moral choices. On an intelligence trip
behind enemy lines, you and your patrol are spotted by a civilian
teenager. Your work is compromised
unless you kill him. Can you? No.[18] You need information about enemy positions
and strength. You have two
prisoners. Can you torture and/or kill
one to make the other talk? No.[19] You are on a bombing raid and there is the
prospect of "collateral damage" (meaning destruction or death visited
upon innocent people as you bomb legitimate targets). Can you proceed?
Probably, yes, according to the Principle of Double Effect, which states
that we may act in a way proportionate to a justified end, even if “collateral damage”
is foreseen, provided that it is not intended.
By the way, could the Air Force officer from the Fail-Safe scenario at the beginning of
this chapter morally drop the nuclear weapon on New York City? No.
Was it a legal order? Probably. Did the President mean well, trying to avert
World War III. Certainly. Good
intentions, however, are not enough to justify unethical action. The relativist might condone dropping
the bomb on New York City on utilitarian grounds. The universalist must condemn the action.[20]
"No one can escape from the fundamental questions:
What must I do? How do I distinguish
good from evil?"[21] Knowing the wise and the foolish, the just
and the unjust, the virtuous and the vicious requires more than personal or
idiosyncratic knowledge. If the only
frame of reference I have is my own background and experience, my viewpoint
will necessarily be limited and egoistic.[22] That is one reason we talk of the liberal
arts as broadening, for good education should inculcate respect for moral
tradition.[23] Edmund Burke (1729-1797) in his Reflections
on the Revolution in France put it this way: "People will not look forward to posterity who never look
backward to their ancestors." The
historical amnesiac will invariably be a moral illiterate; that is, those who
have not read history forgo a great deal of knowledge and, presumably, wisdom
which can be a helpful guide to present and future action. But those who have little knowledge of
history and little knowledge of ethics can hardly hope to distinguish justice
from injustice. As the philosopher John
Kekes says: "If we know what our moral tradition and conception of the
good life call for, then we know how to evaluate and judge complex situations.
And then the exercise of courage, moderation, and justice becomes a matter of
applying our knowledge to make the right effort, in the right circumstances, in
the right way."[24]
From Plato through John Rawls, philosophers have
attempted to define justice.
Frequently, they settle upon the formula that justice is giving everyone
his due. As is so often true, words
which suggest ideas of fundamental, eternal importance are inadequate in
conveying the essence of their subject.
Justice, as a word, hardly conveys the full meaning of justice as
a cardinal virtue. Perhaps both term and concept can be understood better if we
briefly discuss the three basic forms of justice: commutative, distributive, and legal.
Commutative justice refers to fairness in exchanges or
contracts between people (in such areas as wages and prices). As the philosopher Josef Pieper wrote,
"Every phase of man's communal life, in the family as well as in the
state, is a compromise between the interests of individuals with equal
rights."[25] Distributive justice refers to the
allocation of social resources, such as power and wealth. General or legal or contributive justice
pertains to what the citizen owes in fairness to the community. We might think of these three types of
justice as, first, what we owe to one another (fulfilling obligations and
paying debts), what the community owes its citizens in accordance with their
contributions and needs, and what we owe our society. Note that we are back to
the fundamental concept of ethics:
owing. We cannot be happy,
fulfilled people leading lives of purpose and meaning unless we know and do
what we ought to, unless we justly discharge our duties. The problem, as we
have seen, is that duties can conflict. For example, we know that we must
return property in good order to those from whom we borrow. Would that apply to
returning a car promptly to its owner, even though he might be inebriated at
the time, or to returning a hunting rifle to its owner at a time he is
momentarily enraged at a neighbor? What
is the just thing to do? What is the
practical truth?
When postmodernist thought tells us that there is no
"Truth," it unavoidably contributes to a victory of the gutter. If
there is no practical truth about what is to be done, then there can be no Evil
(that which ought not be done). And
Evil--utter, unredeemed hate--surely exists. We shrink from identifying evil as
such because we are afraid we being called "self righteousness," or
"intolerant," or "old fashioned." Conscience (from the
Latin for “with knowledge”) demands an understanding of moral tradition, of
ethical principle, and of Truth. No
truth = no conscience; no conscience = no evil; no evil = no dilemma in bombing
either Moscow or New York City; no dilemmas = no limitations in the conduct of
war; therefore, justice does not exist, and war need have no limitations.
From where does our conception of the practical truth,
our conscience, come? Because we are
members of a state (a country or a "polis"),
we learn a cultural and a moral tradition.
If that tradition is wise and just, we are likely, but of course not
certain, to be increasingly wise and just.
So much of who we are depends upon where we have come from. No one has put this better than Alasdair
MacIntyre: "I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my
nation, a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and
obligations. These constitute the given
of my life, my moral starting point.
This is in part what gives my life its own moral particularity."[26] We cannot expect to be reasonably just or
truly free unless we are well educated about the problems of the past, the
promises of the future, and the perils involved in both.
In a very real sense, all ethics is about perspective--being able to see both
distance and depth. Perspective demands
that we examine issues from many standpoints, not just one. Perspective demands broad vision. We learn from perspective--as from art,
which informs us about illusion and about the conflict of interpretation. We are reminded of "dueling
duties," about universalism, about the need to choose wisely and justly.
We are members of a country; we may be members of the profession of arms--both
shape and influence us. They give us a
"moral particularity." We owe
our country; we owe our profession and colleagues. But we owe only up to a point. There are things we cannot do for family, for profession, for
country. There are things which, if
they would force us to cross the line (such as bombing New York City, such as
killing innocent hostages), we must refuse to do.
One hundred years ago, on 17 October 1899, Carl Schurz
(1829-1906), an American editor, gave a speech in Chicago to the
Anti-Imperialist Conference: "Our
country, right or wrong," he said. "When right to be kept right; when
wrong to be put right." Our
country--its laws, traditions, and customs--give us our moral starting point.
They shape our
perspective. But the mission of a unit,
the strategic plans of a nation, the vision of a racial group—these things must
never be permitted to determine our perspective entirely. We must seek to see further. We must have the perspective, the ethical
power of discrimination, and the prudence to know that standards exist
according to which we can judge our country and its political and military
officers, its politics and diplomacy, and its national security policies and
decisions. We must remember that
keeping and putting our country "right" requires understanding of
what right means; it requires a prudential knowledge of the practical
truth which transcends culture.
Zerubbabel was correct, after all:
there is no injustice in truth.
Our task, politically and morally, is to ensure that justice and truth
always coincide.
We will close with a few observations about ethics and
"plane geometry." There is a
way to explain, briefly and pointedly, much of what we have said above. Imagine
a bridge. On one side of the bridge are our beliefs. On the other side of the bridge are our actions. We know that to be just, our actions should
be consistent with our beliefs. If they
aren't, we have failed. We have been
either moral cowards or hypocrites. So:
(1) We have to cross the bridge, "connecting" our beliefs with our
actions. But that is not enough.
There are gravitational (and occasional transportational)
pressures on the bridge, and it will collapse unless it has certain supports.
The supports for our ethical bridge are our faith, family, customs, laws,
friends, associations, education, and so on.
Suppose the supports are rotting or rotten. We have a poor education or no family to speak of, or we are
surrounded by unjust laws or by evil friends.
The supports to the bridge will not hold it up when we must walk from
the side of (wise) beliefs to the side of actions. So: (2.) We must have strong supports under our "ethical
bridge." These supports include
the moral virtues of justice, courage, and temperance to assure that we do not
turn aside into actions that are inconsistent with our beliefs. These supports must be continually refreshed
and renewed, even as real bridge supports must occasionally be re-worked to
maintain their strength. But that is not enough.
We assumed, above, "good" beliefs. Even as real bridges forbid the passage of
certain unwanted traffic for various engineering reasons, so our metaphorical
bridge must forbid the passage of certain beliefs for ethical reasons. The "bridgekeepers" are wise
parents, family, friends, teachers, colleagues and so on who continually
counsel us. The connection of evil
beliefs with evil actions--and the celebration of philosophical monsters such
as Nietzsche--result only in a "bridge" over which pass convoys
headed to death camps. So: (3) A good bridge between beliefs and actions
demands prudent "bridgekeepers" who know the difference between wise
and foolish, just and unjust, virtuous and vicious. But that is probably not enough.
Most people, after all, do not have the temperament and
time for advanced theological and philosophical study.[27] Much of what passes for wisdom often amounts
to undigested morsels of folklore, received rules and guidelines, and
gut-feelings or intuitions parading as eternal truth. That is not always bad,
but it is by its nature at least unconsidered or, possibly, ill
considered. The general approach to
ethics of most people is consequentialist or utilitarian. Justice amounts to acting upon the answer to
a simple, single question: What offers
the greatest benefit to the greatest number?
So: (4) Do what effects or brings about the most good to the most
people. But that is still not enough.
Here is where "ethical plane geometry" enters
the picture. "Do what offers the most good to the most people" makes
great sense up to a point. There
must be a point beyond which we would be unwilling to go in some actions. Are we willing to do anything to
achieve something? Or are there
some things so important, so fundamental, so sacred, that we will
not--we must not--transgress them to achieve something else? So: (5) Do what offers the most good to the
most people up to a point. But that is
not good enough.
"In everything we do, however great or small,"
writes Tom Morris, "we should always be asking ourselves, 'In doing this,
am I becoming the kind of person I want to be?'" For, "[w]henever you
make a decision, whenever you act, you are never just doing, you are always becoming."[28] The decisions we make reflect the truth of
this bit of folklore—“We are what we do; we do what we are." In every moral action we either develop or
corrupt our relation to the Truth (and it is to the Truth that we must
ultimately answer). Making one good
decision, establishing one point beyond which we will not go, is fine; but it
is something we must continually do. In
making numerous decisions, and in establishing numerous points beyond which we
will not go, we effectively create a line (a series of points). That "line" is an assembly of the
sacred and solemn points of our life. That line tells us that there principles
we will not betray, people we will not abandon, things we will not do, concessions
we will not make to achieve some goal. Our
lives are spent creating a line we will not cross. This is the baseline of our character. And in drawing that line, we recognize the universal need to
discriminate: there are wrong things
and "wronger" things (which is why we may commit the prima facie wrong thing of killing in
just war, rather than permitting the "wronger" thing of letting the
Nazis conquer Europe and kill millions of innocents); and we recognize, too,
the power of Truth, in which no injustice resides. So: (6) The ethical line we draw, with the help of those who have
gone before and to help those who will come after, is our bridge between
conscientious belief and courageous action.
We have informed our conscience and thus formed our values on the basis
of virtue. We then understand what
Abraham Lincoln said in February 1860:
"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us
to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it." The bridge of prudence, built upon the
support of justice, will carry virtuous beliefs into courageous action.
[1]Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (Boston: St. Paul Books & Media, 1993), para. 7 (p. 17).
[2]As a very quick overview: virtues are good habits of the intellect or the appetite that both make their possessor good and make his or her actions good. Prudence is a virtue of the practical intellect which deliberates about available means to a good end, judges which is best, and directs that it be carried out. Justice is a virtue of the will that disposes us to render to others their due. Fortitude or courage is the virtue that disposes us to stand firm in the face of fear or difficulties and to act as prudence directs. And temperance is the virtue that disposes us to resist the temptations due to pleasure that might cause us to deviate from the directions of prudence. Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966) is a useful and accessible treatment of the cardinal virtues.
[3]Cf. Proverbs 19:5 and Acts 5:1-11.
[4]Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals is justly the most famous work of deontological ethics. It is short but very difficult; brilliant but very wrong.
[5]The classical statement of utilitarian ethics is John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. There are other forms of teleological ethics which reject the principle of utility. The best known examples are laid out in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae.
[6]We believe that we must always love God and neighbor. How we discharge our duties in those respects, however, can be difficult to determine. There may also be a number of exceptionless negative precepts, such as “do not commit murder.” We will discuss this possibility later.
[7] Although Malham M. Wakin does not use this noun in his writings, we infer the term from him. See "The Ethics of Leadership I," in War, Morality, and the Military Profession, 2d ed., ed. M. M. Wakin (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), p. 195. General Wakin discusses universal moral obligations, which he properly says can conflict. See note #10 below.
[8]The first point that should be made is technical, but critical. The “greatest good” of which we speak is not limited to pleasure or utility, but includes the common good of the community circumscribed by our answer to the question of cui bono. An accessible discussion of the common good, as contrasted with both private good and public good, can be found in Jacques Maritain’s The Person and the Common Good.
[9]One is again reminded of Maritain (1882-1973): "[M]an is by no means for the state. The State is for man." Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 13.
[10] Wakin illustrates this effectively. Suppose you promise to meet your boss at noon for lunch. On the way there, however, you see an accident, and you have the chance to help the victims--but it will make you late. Do you violate your promise to your boss? You have the duty of keeping your word. You have the duty of helping the victims. Clearly, you should help the victims. Circumstances, Wakin tells us, certainly do matter in making decisions--but that is not the same as situation ethics (which rarely admits of overarching principles). We break our word in this case because reason tells us we have a higher obligation. That emphatically does not mean that henceforth we treat promise-keeping cavalierly; we still recognize it as a solemn obligation and indeed it is not our intention to break our word; it is merely a foreseen and regrettable outcome of our doing the right thing. Thus, universal ethical obligations can be seen as neither absolute nor relative.
[11]Ibid.
[12]The absolutist probably does have other options: he could remain silent; he could try to create a diversion; he could attack the soldiers. Of course, such actions are liable to convey all the information desired by the interrogators.
[13] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Liguori, MO: Liguori, 1994), No. 2488 and No. 2489. We should note that the Catechism does not commend lying.
[14]Ibid., No. 2408.
[15]The example is based upon a story by Bernard Williams as cited in Ed. L. Miller, Questions That Matter, 2d shorter edition (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998), p. 395.
[16]Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1756.
[17]What then about our endorsement of theft in some extreme circumstances? The tradition which we draw from holds that people have a right to the material goods needed to survive when there is enough to go around. The Hebrew culture in which the Commandments were promulgated held the same thing. One cannot really steal what one has a right to.
[18]See, for example, Department of the Army Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare: "A commander may not put his prisoners to death because their presence retards his movements or diminishes his power of resistance by necessitating a large guard, or by reason of their consuming supplies, or because it appears certain that they will regain their liberty through the impending success of their forces. It is likewise unlawful for a commander to kill his prisoners on grounds of self-preservation, even in the case of commando or airborne operations . . . " (para. 85). See also Anthony E. Hartle, Moral Issues in Military Decision Making (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), p. 75.
[19]As Air Force Pamphlet 110-31 (International Law--The Conduct of Armed Conflict and Air Operations) puts it: "Physical or mental torture or any other form of coercion to secure information of any kind whatever is prohibited" (Art 13-3). For a different view, see Richard Marcinko, Rogue Warrior (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), pp. 117-118. One reviewer (David Murray) says that Marcinko "comes across as less the genuine warrior than a comic-book superhero." The New York Times Book Review, 19 April 1992, p. 12. See also Frederick Downs, The Killing Zone (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978). One of my favorite books is David Donovan [Terry Turner], Once a Warrior King (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985). Downs and "Donovan" provide two first-person accounts of Vietnam War combat and ethical crises.
[20] So does that mean World War III would ensue, killing even more millions of American and Soviet citizens? First, that outcome, although admittedly likely, was not certain whereas the death of the New Yorkers was certain. Second, we cannot deliberately kill people to bring about good results--remember the American asked to shoot one hostage? (All we have done here is to enlarge the numbers.) Third, we think there are times we must trust in God's providence and mercy. And fourth, again, hard cases make bad law.
[21]Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, p. 10.
[22]As Servais Pinckaers says: "Egoism also has the power to vitiate and twist the answers to all the questions we have been examining. 'I love' becomes, beneath the surface, 'I love myself' or 'I love to be loved' by God or neighbor. 'I seek happiness' is transformed into 'I seek my happiness' or 'I seek happiness for myself.' 'I look for truth' becomes 'I look for my truth, the truth that suits me' or indeed 'I make my own truth.' 'I want justice' means 'I want my justice, my rights,' or 'I do justice to myself.' The distinctions are very subtle, because egoism uses the terms of love so as to give the appearance of it." The Sources of Christian Ethics, translated from the third edition by Mary Thomas Noble (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), p. 43. See also p. 29.
[23]Tradition is critically important. But it is not enough. Tradition, for example, upheld slavery. To reduce ethics to tradition is to imprison it in cultural relativism. There must be something beyond custom: "If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the choice of that action makes our will and ourselves morally evil, thus putting us in conflict with our ultimate end, the supreme good, God himself." John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, p. 72. When human acts are ordered toward God, in keeping with the Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the Modes of Responsibility, we have a means of judging the wisdom and the justice of those acts.
[24]John Kekes, Moral Wisdom and Good Lives (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 208.
[25]Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), pp. 73-74. See also Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2411.
[26]Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2d ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 220.
[27]Neither do we mean to suggest that advanced study leads to wise action. It should. But it may not. From Plato's Meno to the present, there has been a debate about teaching virtue. In his later dialogues, Plato came to attribute more importance to habituation and the moral virtues, and Aristotle extended his thought in this respect. But neither Plato nor Aristotle understood the importance of grace. However important knowledge and virtue are, grace is required for us to act as we ought.
[28]Tom Morris, If Aristotle Ran General Motors (New York: Holt, 1997), pp. 165, 164.